History

For thirty to forty years prior to 1999, several attempts were made to establish an Orthodox church in the Mid-Ohio Valley, serving the Parkersburg, West Virginia, Marietta, and Athens, Ohio area, but none succeeded. It was not until late 1999 that a meeting convened among several people of Orthodox faith, together with Father Leonidas Drakopoulos of Saint Spyridon Church in Clarksburg, West Virginia, to try again.

Over the course of 2002 a small organizing group met for dinners in Parkersburg, searched phone books for names of Greek ancestry, formed a calling committee, and eventually secured permission from Trinity Episcopal Church of Parkersburg to hold Saturday morning services at no charge. Then, on February 1, 2003, Eric and Niki Russell signed a land contract with the Catholic Diocese of Steubenville for the purchase of the former Saint Ambrose Catholic Church, rectory, and three lots at 120 Maple Street in Belpre, Ohio, for $150,000. That same day the first Divine Liturgy was celebrated in the building, with approximately 38 families in attendance. A visitor from New York, Tony Veanes, donated his time and skill to build the iconostasion, and the first altar boy was his grandson Anthony Scott. During that first year the mission recorded six chrismations and one baptism.

On August 1, 2003, His Eminence Metropolitan Maximos of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh announced that the mission church would be dedicated to the Holy Glorious Apostle James, the Brother of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, with October 23rd as its feast day. In April 2004, Metropolitan Maximos visited Saint James to celebrate a Presanctified Liturgy during Holy Week, the first time Orthodox Holy Week services had ever been held in the Mid-Ohio Valley and the first time a sitting Orthodox hierarch had ever visited the region. In October 2006 the community incorporated as the Mid-Ohio Valley Orthodox Heritage Society, Inc., and on March 19, 2007, after sustained fundraising and negotiation, the deed to the Maple Street property was signed over to the community for $124,125.64 financed by a local institution in Parkersburg.

Father Leonidas, who had served as the founding priest and tireless shepherd of Saint James from its earliest meetings, passed away on September 9, 2009, after a battle with a brain tumor, at the age of 67. His loss was deeply felt by the small community he had nurtured from nothing. The parish continued through the faithful service of visiting priests and the dedication of its lay leadership.

Saint James Greek Orthodox Mission Church at 120 Maple Street in Belpre serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the Mid-Ohio Valley as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, bringing the ancient faith to a region that for decades had none, through the perseverance of a small group of believers who refused to give up.